Lord Valthalak
Lord Valthalak is a Drakonid boss summoned in Upper Blackrock Spire by a Brazier of Beckoning. Strangely, he is categorized as a humanoid, and not as a dragonkin like other drakonids. He is the last boss in the Dungeon Set 2 quest line. General Information *Level: Boss *Location: Upper Blackrock Spire The Lair of the Beast *Type: Humanoid (Drakonid) *Health: 100,000 *Mana: 2620 Attacks and Abilities Phase 1: Valthalak has a caster type weak melee attack in phase 1. A slow one that does 400-500 damage to a warrior. Shadow Wrath A shadow-based, chain life drain, which obviously translates into healing for himself. Hits for 750 Shadow damage on the first target, and will jump to another target if anyone is close enough. Each time it jumps, it doubles in damage in the manner of Holy Wrath from High Priest Venoxis from Zul'Gurub. At the 4th jump, the damage will be 6k and lethal for most people. Being a life-drain, all damage dealt will heal Valthalak. *Keep him away from the raid party and don't let anyone get close enough for a bounce to chain to the rest of the group. A distance of 20 to 30 yards is fine. *Ensure that your party is spread out from each other so if a chain is unavoidable, you at least minimize the bounces. Or alternatively, try the Blackstar Triangle of Doom, described below. Heal The chain life drain (noted above) will replenish his health, so it is important that you have a warrior tank the mob alone (until phase 2). Alternately, if you have more people in melee range, you will need to interrupt when he casts the life drain. It will show as a purple beam that chains between friendly targets. Have one or two people mana drain him (his regen and total mana are quite low). The spell is also interruptible using standard methods(Shield Bash, Earth Shock, Counterspell, etc.). A mod such as EnemyCast or Spell Alert can be helpful. All his spells will sadly not show up on the standard 'EnemyCastBar' you can have displayed below the enemy portrait. Lord Valthalak apparantly has no specific animations when he heals, alternately, Warriors with Mortal Strike would greatly assist, as well as rogues with wound poisons. It is also possible to just DPS through the heals. The rate that Valthalak heals himself appears to be random. Spectral Assassins These spawn two at a time throughout phase 1. They will run towards someone in your raid (can include pets) and eventually cast a mindflay-like Defile ability (a purple vile beam). Defile cannot be dispelled/cleansed and stuns its target for ten seconds. If the spell is allowed to complete, its target dies and is transformed into an additional Spectral Assassin. The assassins have around 1,500 hp with little to no armor and resistances. *Everyone must kill Spectral Assassins as soon as they appear. Be wary if you use a mouse to target because they can be hard to see and click. You can hit 'v' to bring up the Mob Health panes or use this macro: /target Spec (recommended). If you use a keyboard for targetting, no adjustments are necessary, just do as usual. *They can be damaged by Area of Effect spells. *The spectral assassins' Defile cannot be interrupted by normal methods(Kick, Shield Bash, etc). Other abilities like Scatter Shot, Concussion Blow, Hammer of Justice,... do work. Use them if you cannot kill the Assassin in time to save a raid member. *Ranged DPS plays a key role here as Hunters, Mages, Warlocks, and Shaman can kill the assassins without having to frantically cross the room. This can be critical particularly when they spawn at or near Valthalak. *Stun spells work best to disrupt Defile. Phase 2: Enrage At 40% health he will switch weapons and start hitting very hard. He stops spawning Spectral Assassins but still does Shadow Wrath if he has mana. *Disarm him whenever available. *By this point your tank should have a great deal of threat accumulated so just burn him down. Phase 3: Shadowbolt Volley At 15% health, he will frequently cast an AoE Shadowbolt on the entire raid in addition to the changes in phase 2. *Maximize your DPS, finish him fast. *Use a Greater Shadow Protection Potion if necessary to minimize the shadow damage. General Advice *If you plan on doing several attempts, have someone logout a character that can resurrect in The Beast's room. If you wipe, you can simply log them in and resurrect a healer in your party to continue. *Valthalak can be disarmed so do it whenever it's up (particularly in phase 2). He doesn't hit that hard to begin with, but this will help your healers conserve mana, which will be much more needed when his damage picks up in phases 2 and 3. *If all rogues and other melee dps stay behind Valthalak at max range opposite the tank shadow wrath will not hop to them. *Have priests cast Prayer of Shadow Protection on the group before starting. Alternative tactic: Blackstar Triangle of Doom As an alternative tactic, you can try the Blackstar Triangle of Doom, performed with success by Clan Blackstar on 19 December 2006. Group Composition Clan Blackstar first tried with two Warriors, two Paladins, two Warlocks, one Hunter, one Priest, one Mage and one feral Druid. After three wipes, it became quite obvious we were severely lacking in ranged DPS, so we switched a Warlock and the Druid for two extra Hunters. In general, try to limit the number of melee DPS'ers as much as you can. Fight setup The main tank fights Lord Valthalak where he is summoned, in the middle of the room. The rest of the raid splits up in two tight groups, one group near the southwest corner of the room, the other near the southeast corner of the room. Hunters in each group should have range on the other group. Each group contains at least one ranged DPS character, preferably two or more. How it works *The main tank is the only one near Valthalak at all times. This prevents his heals from becoming a real problem. *Spectral Assassins always spawn at Lord Valthalak and will either target the main tank or move to one of the two groups to attack a player there. Designate a number of ranged DPS'ers to focus on Spectral Assassins as soon as they appear. We recommend at least two well-geared characters. Melee characters also protect the others in their group from the Spectral Assassins' Defile ability. Don't forget to use stuns, Gouge, Scatter Shot, etc. when a character is almost dying from Defile. You should get Valthalak to 40% without losing anyone to the Spectral Assassins. *Designate the remaining ranged DPS to take Lord Valthalak down as fast as possible. They should still keep an eye on the Spectral Assassins, in case the other players cannot kill them fast enough alone. *Once he reaches 40%, the designated roles change. Everyone focuses on Lord Valthalak now, including melee characters, and goes maximum DPS. No more Spectral Assassins will spawn. Use Disarm liberally to lower incoming damage and have your healers pay a lot of attention to tanks in particular. He hits very hard now and will cast AoE shadowbolts. *Mana draining him is not needed in this tactic. Only the tank will be targeted by his Drain Life, the little health he gains in this way can be DPS'ed through. When we were mana draining him in our first few attempts, we didn't notice any less healing anyway. Overall review This is a very challenging fight. You may need some practice to get it right. Once you get to Phase 2 (at 40%), the fight becomes a more standard boss fight. The number of ranged DPS'ers in your raid will make or break the attempt. We recommend bringing Hunters, Mages, Shadow Priests, Elemental Shaman and Balance Druids in particular. Warlocks might work, but assign them to Lord Valthalak as they usually lack the burst DPS to kill the Spectral Assassins in time. Alternative Tactic: Kodo Punch The White Kodo Clan of server Feathermoon had relatively little success with the advice and strategies given above. I'm not certain where this strategy came from, but I'm giving credit to Domoniac previously of the White Kodo Clan and presently of our "sister" raiding guild The Endless. It was successfully done December 20, 2006 and on at least one previous occasion that I've been to. Our group consisted of: 1 main tank warrior, 2 DPS warriors, 2 priests, 2 shamans, 1 mage, 1 hunter and 1 warlock. The main tank was wearing full Might and a Thunderfury, one of the priests was half in Transcendence and the mage had mostly PVP gear, but the others were mostly wearing MC/ZG quality gear. One of our shamans was in half greens, half Scholo/UBRS blues, but he's a good guy so we took him along for the ride, he's enhancement. The other shaman was elemental. This strategy is different because of the largely melee DPS composition of our group. As said above, melee has issues getting to the shades on time. The strategies above recommend keeping melee DPS far away from the boss, but we couldn't get him below 80% with that. Phase 1 We put all of the ranged DPS and healers in a single corner, the south west one in our case. This group stands as close together as possible, so that when the shades come running out, it is clear where they are going to run. The main tank stands in the centre of the room, within healing distance of the corner. The melee DPS stands between the casters and the main tank. Melee DPS waits for the obligatory 3 Sunders before going in. Their main goal is to bring the boss down as quickly as possible. If a shade appears next to them and doesn't run toward the caster camp, one of the 3 melee DPS people have to stop and focus on that shade. The casters spend most of their time waiting for shades to run to them and then having the mage AOE them down. One of our shamans was elemental, so there was a fair amount of power in the caster camp. We didn't find that the bosses healing was something to worry about at all. He gets to 40% within a very short period of time. Phase 2 At the start of phase 2, all of the caster camp should spread out. Otherwise, the rest of this fight is as described above. Everyone burns down the boss, be sure to disarm. Phase 3 At 15% DOT him up and focus heals on the main tank. Your melee DPS will likely die in this phase, and while you should be worried, it isn't something you can really help. Be sure you have enough ranged DPS to take him down. Quests * Loot * * * * * * * * Valthalak, Lord Valthalak, Lord Valthalak, Lord Valthalak, Lord Valthalak, Lord